


Framed by Gold

by orphan_account



Category: Thor (2011)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Baby!Loki, Daddy!Thor, F/M, Gen, Implied Underage Sex, Kink Meme, Mild Language, Parenthood, Single Father, Timeskips
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-09-13
Updated: 2012-09-13
Packaged: 2017-11-14 04:25:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,962
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/511284
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>AU: The first time Thor lies with a woman he doesn't realise she's a Jotun in disguise, nor does he expect her to mother his child and leave it abandoned at the Inn where she worked. Forced to raise his half-breed son Loki, Thor struggles with his hatred for the boy's Frost Giant heritage and the responsibilities as a father.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Framed by Gold

**Author's Note:**

> This story is a response to the Thor Kink Meme prompt [here](http://norsekink.livejournal.com/10823.html?thread=22308679#t22308679).
> 
> I chose to make the resulting baby Loki and explore the relationship they might have had if Thor was his father and not his adoptive brother. Mainly it's about with how Thor deals with having a Jötun child.

The labour took her by surprise one evening after work. All day she had felt off; a certain kind of unease as she served men their mead and ignored their groping hands on her thighs. It was always the same in the Inn. The men who came here did so to tell stories of their bravery, acting like pigs as they ate and drank and showing no solid proof of their deeds. She had heard thousands of stories before. Some contradicted each other; two men taking the victory for the one tale. Some were obvious fabrications, where cities were made up and the monsters defeated weren’t even native to it anyway. She waited each day for something new, but the men of Asgard failed to supply it. 

Still it was better than Jötunheim. That world had become a mess since Odin’s appearance. She had left the Ice Land a few years previously, avoiding the Bifrost and using her magic to cast a glamour over herself. It took a few days to get used to being so much shorter; to having such a weak body. Her arms were too thin for her liking. They could barely lift anything much heavier than a plate of six meads. But she was never required to do anything more.

She had chosen her glamour to be appeasing, based on the things she knew of Asgardian wives- those with many children and who were revered as ‘beautiful’. She herself didn’t see what was so beautiful. They were all too small, too ugly and far too plain. All of them looked the same. But obviously Asgardian men thought different. The glamour she chose got more gropes than any of the other women working at the Inn. More attention than she wanted, really. But the glamour was strong, and she didn’t want to risk using magic to change it in case it might be noticed by half-creditable users of the arts, or by the all-seeing eye of Heimdall. So she stuck with the same face for almost two years, serving tables and collecting coin for no real reason. The money was worthless to her. It couldn’t buy her back the glory of Jötunheim.

Sometimes she grew bored of simply being a maid to the drunkards, and every now and then there was a man who was not a complete loss. Boredom and curiosity had eaten away at her mind until she’d finally relented and brought a man back to her room. She found Asgardian intercourse unusual. The first man she felt was clumsy, and over time she learnt that many of them expected her to lie flat and have no input in the act at all. It wasn’t like the Frost Giant way at all. However, some were different. The first time she rode astride a man shone like a beacon in her memory. He was only a young boy, desperate to prove himself a man but easily enchanted and manipulated at the push of a finger. His face as she leaned over him was like a fire blazing in the very heart of Jötunheim Palace.

And she knew who he was, of course.  Everybody in the whole Nine Realms knew him. She’d known who he was before she’d even left Jötunheim- and that made her victory over his body taste as sweet as Asgardian blood. Being able to conquer the baby-faced golden son of Odin stayed in her dreams for months after the experience. She caught him, looking in through the windows for her some days, but he never stepped a foot into the Inn again.

She had thought that the last of it. She would move onto other men and he would move onto be King, slaughtering his own herds of Frost Giants, all the while unknowing that he had bedded one. Life would continue and she would keep her mouth shut about the affair, if only to protect her own head. She was quite fond of it remaining joined to her shoulders.

She had certainly never thought she would become with child from any of her experiences. She’d believed Frost Giant genes incompatible with Asgardian. They should have been. There were too many differences between the species- she couldn’t imagine what the child would look like. For a moment she envisioned a stillborn, lying dead between her legs, horrible and deformed. That had to be the truth, hadn’t it? How else would she have gone to term without noticing the life inside her? There was no life. Just a mistake that had suffered for its own existence.

The labour was an uneasiness that turned into an ache that left her glamour down. She hadn’t seen her own face in such a long time that it was a shock when she looked into the mirror of her dressing table. The dress she had bought from the market last Full Moon had ripped during the transformation, the pain having distracted her from the control she had taken years to master. She towered over her Asgardian possessions, her bed unable to take her weight so she sat on the floor.

When the child was born, she could understand why she hadn’t realised he was there. He was a tiny runt of a thing, with almost no magical signature. The babe fit into a single palm with his face scrunched up, crinkling the designed imprinted on his forehead. He was bald and although his skin was blue he had the burning eyes of the Odinson, like frozen flames framed by pale eyelashes of gold.  A blonde Frost Giant? The idea was sickening.

There was no way she could stay here anymore. She didn’t need the bastard of the Odinson being found sucking from her breast, and there was no way she could take the baby into Jötunheim. It would be slaughtered on sight. What could she do with it then? Not welcome here or there. Send it to Midgard and let it get raised by a couple of mortal idiots?

She let the child feed from her as she considered the options. The tiny creature could barely fit the nipple in his mouth and she found herself ashamed she had allowed herself to breed such a thing. When the babe was full, she rested him down into the shreds of her dress and watched his lashes flutter shut to rest. “All I can give you is a chance,” she said, casting the glamour again and dressing. If she left under the cover of dark, she would be back in Jötunheim before the baby was discovered. She left her gold and few possessions. “If fate is kind to you, runt, someone will find you,” she said, waiting in the doorway and looking back to the sleeping child. He was so small, even for an Asgardian, she thought, _especially_ for one with Ǽsir blood in him. Maybe that was the curse of cross breeding; unwanted spoils.

“If the one whom discovers you, finds you a disgrace, then let your sleep guide you to Valhalla, and let your poor soul rest a while.” She pulled the hood up over her hair and gently shut the door behind herself, locking away the dirty secret that had been born that night. She heard women entertaining men in the rooms close to her, hoping they were smart enough to avoid reproducing, but in her heart knew that even if they did, they would at least produce full-blooded children worthy of surviving their first night.

She slipped out of the Inn, taking a horse from the nearby stables and riding towards the portal she had once travelled through years ago, slowly to avoid causing her body more grief. And all the while she rode, the baby slept in his mother’s clothes, sucking his thumb as his eyelashes fluttered and he dreamt of a warm, wonderful life ahead.

* * *

A baby was crying. That was all he needed after a hard day’s work. The Inn owner rubbed his temple as he looked up from the cash register, coins littered around him as he counted out the profits from a society’s hard day’s drinking. He rubbed his temples and continued to count his coins, trying to ignore the sound of the baby. Surely its mother would waken and settle it down, eventually.

The crying continued and got louder, grating on his nerves with each wail. What kind of mother let a child cry that long? He gathered the coins still to be counted into a bag and locked them in his safe before heading upstairs. Some of the barmaids were leaning out of their rooms curiously. One of the younger girls gestured towards a door. “I think it’s coming from over there…” she said.

The owner paused and then frowned. That was one of the employee rooms. Someone had gone and gotten knocked up? He turned to the young girl, “Go back to sleep,” he said firmly, shooing the girl away with a frown.

He didn’t move to open the door until the girl did as told, shutting the door and leaving him alone in the hall. She was probably listening in through the door though. Little harlot. The lot of them were too nosy for their own good.

Turning, he looked over the door and listened. The noise had lessened, but there was certainly still something moving around. Perhaps the girl had finally gotten off her ass to deal with the child? He knocked on the door and when he wasn’t answered he let out a grunt. “You’d better be dead, or gone,” he muttered to himself.  He wouldn’t stand for being ignored by his own employees.  If she was inside, she was certainly at least unemployed now.

He pushed the door open and stepped inside, shutting it and looking around the room.  Not much seemed out of place. The girl’s things were still lying on her dresser, hair still entwined in the teeth of her comb. Her coin purse was sitting out as well, and the owner thought to take something from it, for compensation about the noise complaints he would get in the morning. It was the girl’s fault for leaving it out anyway. But his hand stalled on the way to the purse when he noticed the pile of clothes on the floor, hidden around the side of the bed. What was more shocking was the blue baby miserably looking up at him from within it.

The owner let out a noise of complete confusion, stumbling back until he hit the woman’s wardrobe, half slipping on his feet. “A-allfather-” he breathed, looking down at the Jötun child. “How did you get in here then?” he asked, sliding away from the baby as if he thought it might lurch up and bite him.

The baby’s eyes followed him as he scrambled back across the room and he swallowed. He waited by the door when he finally reached it. Was he really afraid of a babe? He was a grown man; he’d fought in more wars than this baby had seen hours of breath!

But even the bravest of warriors were cautious about the Frost Giants… But he also didn’t want to be seen a coward; running from a (clearly) new-born baby.  
  
He eased his way back towards the Jötun, wincing when the baby started crying again. It looked like a runt but certainly had a healthy enough pair on lungs on it. The question was why was it lying in the girl’s clothes? She wasn’t a Frost Giant, was she? The owner had thought her one of the most beautiful in the realms. It had been a glamour? A very strong one, if so…

He moved over and put aside his repulsion of the blue skin, lifting the baby and the dress into his arms awkwardly. He didn’t have any children of his own. Was there a certain way to hold them? The baby’s head hung limp on his neck (for the baby was a boy for certain) and he seemed to get louder. The owner shifted him around until the small thing lay slumped into his chest, his heart thundering in panic under the baby’s ear.

What was he supposed to do with it? Did the Jötun woman plan to come back for it? Had she left to hunt for food? Did baby Jötuns only eat the flesh of Asgardian children? Those were the stories, weren’t they? Or had she just left him because of the size? He was smaller than an Asgard baby.

The owner stood, dumbstruck with what to do and another shift of the babe in his arms caused him to jolt in pain, dropping the bundle and causing the baby to shriek. The owner stared at his arm, a burn forming across the skin. That’s right, you couldn’t touch Jötuns. Their skin was too cold and frostbite set in instantly. He stepped back from the bruised baby, blowing hot hair onto his arm. Was it like a poison? Would it creep up his arm and grasp around his heart like an iron fist? He found it difficult to breathe suddenly.

Perhaps he should kill it now? But it was just a baby; the baby of a monster but a baby no doubt.

But _what_ was he supposed to do with the creature? Take it to the Allfather who had practically slaughters all the Frost Giant, waltz up and claim Odin could use more practise? No, that didn’t sound like a good idea.

He could never raise it himself. Give it to Heimdall and tell the other to send it across the Bifrost? Returning him to his own kind seemed like the smartest idea. If he got killed by the snow, then it wouldn’t be on the owner’s head.

He moved to the bed, stripping it of it’s under sheet and throwing it over the crying baby. It settled the child for some reason. Did monsters prefer the dark? He supposed it was darker in Jötunheim, but then again, this child had never been to that land as far as he knew.

He squatted down, bracing his legs for a quick retreat should the baby attack, and pulled the baby up, using the blanket to protect his hands. He laid the child on the bed and rolled it up several times in the sheet to make a strong enough barrier. By the time he was done, only the baby’s forehead and eyes were exposed, dark eyebrows knitted together in discomfort from the tightness of the whole thing.

The owner had a proper look at the babe’s face then. His forehead was marked with the raised skin he’d seen in many drawings of the monsters. Thin, black eyebrows, but no hair yet; most Frost Giant’s had hair like midnight though. The babe’s would probably grow in one day.

If it managed to survive.

The babe had a small, button nose and in truth, didn’t look that scary up close. He didn’t even have any teeth to bite with.

It was his eyes, however, that sent the owner of the inn into distress. Framed by golden eyelashes, they were different to any Jötun eyes he had ever heard of. What kind of Jötun had blonde eyelashes like the sun? Did they even have a concept of the sun in the Ice Palace?

The owner had always heard that Jötun eyes were blood red with black lifeless pupils. This baby’s eyes were a furious blue, like the horizon where the sky and sea meet; every shade of blue in the nine realms mixing and washing down into the vortex of the pupil. The owner had only ever seen eyes like them before once-  
  
On a young boy he had allowed to lie with a barmaid some months ago-

He held in his arms… Thor _Odinson_ ’s bastard with a _Frost Giant_?! He slumped back at the idea, arms loosening on the grip of the tightly bundled up babe but not dropping it this time. The baby gurgled from within the thick set of sheets, unaware that he shouldn’t exist.

The owner knew he should have sent the young boy away from the Inn. He had thought it funny- the boy wanting to prove himself a man. He wasn’t going to interrupt the other during such an important moment; the first taste of a woman. Only- it wasn’t a woman, was it? It had been a monster, and now a child of horrendous blood had been created from it. The creature might as well been made in a witch’s cauldron for all it was worth.

The owner wet his lips and looked around the room as if searching for a hole to drop the baby through. No such hole existed though, and the previous plan to send the baby back to Jötunheim was out of the question now. He could not send back to son of Thor. Not even if the bastard was of monster blood. He was part Ǽsir and the owner new better than to mess with the Gods.

No, this was a matter to be brought to Odin. The Allfather would decide on the babe’s fate and the owner of the inn would have nothing more to do with it. Nothing more to do with Frost Giants or babies or young princes!

His hands would be washed clean as soon as he brought the baby to the Hall of Odin.

He shifted the baby in his arms, standing straight and nodding. He looked down to the baby, “Time to visit your… grandfather.” He practically choked on the word, covering up the baby’s face with the sheet to hide him and turning to leave the room.  
  
Then he turned and went back for the coin purse. 

 


End file.
